Postal Tips

So I have some advice about meeting men. Go the post office, act like you have no idea what you are doing, hold up the line and someone will hit on you. I don't know if having one's hair up in a twist with bobby pins helped or not, but it might have. Couldn't hurt to try.

On Tuesday I forced myself up and out the door, on the distasteful mission of returning some packages, two very large and heavy ones at that. I had been putting it off forever, mostly because as soon as I enter the post office doors, I cease to think clearly. I did not have to pretend to not know what I was doing, that came naturally.

In fact, I simply pushed one heavy package up to the postal worker and cheerfully announced that post offices cause me to feel inescapably stupid and I had packages to ship and here was the address, and could they tell me what I needed to do next?

Thus began a nearly hour long visit as I got first the wrong label and then the wrong customs form, and then the right label and then the correct customs form. I heaved the package onto the counter, where it towered over the poor postal agent as he tried to weigh it.

All this time there was a long, slowly moving line behind me. In between corrections, my postal worker took other customers while I retreated to a quiet corner to write for the zillionth time my address, etc. I decided not to waste time being self conscious and simply be good natured about the fact that my idiocy had a large audience whose boredom only increased the interest value of my plight.

It cost and arm and a leg, but I choose to send it anyway, since I just couldn't bear the thought of pushing and lugging the damn things out the exit door under the gaze of so many interested parties.

I was finishing up the correct customs form where I felt the presence of someone come up right behind me and say, into my ear, "Excuse me."

I was not alarmed. I thought surely anyone entering my personal space like that must be someone I knew, so I turned with a pleasantly expectant look on my face that faded away into puzzlement. A complete stranger stood there, respectable in grey suit and glasses.

"I see you're having quite some trouble with those packages," he said conversationally.

I pegged him as someone making conversation while waiting their turn. "Yes, rather," I said with a grin. (I've been reading a great deal of English novels lately.)

He opened his mouth to say something else; I vaguely expected offers of package help, perhaps he had a shipping tip to share or something along those lines. Instead, his gaze dropped to my hand resting on the counter top.

"You're married," he said flatly, without, apparently, stopping to think.

"Yes," I replied, amazed and amused. He was not yet put off. He leaned forward slightly.

"Happily married?" he inquired, his eyes bright behind his glasses.

My mouth dropped open. "Yes!" I repeated, my amazement now impossible to hide. And even though Keith is in Iraq, I half expected to hear his voice come thundering down like the voice of a wrathful god. "And you have no idea who I'm married to," I thought to myself with a grin. "Cause if he was here, you'd be missing half your teeth.

Upon learning that I was happily married and seeing the deepening amusement on my face, he then had the decency to look hangdog and scuttled off. I could hardly contain my wonder that the bizarre exchange and almost turned to the line to ask, "Did you all see that? Did you just see that?"

I didn't though. In between spats of irrepressible giggles, I finished up my business and escaped, so flustered I forgot to pick up the package that my husband had shipped to me, full of gear he doesn't need any more. The husband to whom I am indeed happily married.

I immediately shared this story with him, in the hopes that he would no longer send me off on errands to the post office. My ploy has worked; I am banned from conducting any further business there. However, it might be the place to go if one is actually in the market for a man.